There’s a bank with a branch near my house with only two tellers and one of them has an attitude problem. Instead of processing transactions efficiently, she spends her days talking on her mobile phone and interacting with her coworkers. Everybody, including the bank manager, seems to be afraid of her because she’s been doing it for years and no one is stopping her.
Anyway, my brother works at the head office of the bank and I complained to him about her.
My brother pointed to my phone and said, “Your smartphone is the answer to your problems. If you use your phone or computer for your banking needs, then you will have less interactions with the likes of that person.” While nothing can replace human interaction, banks now realize the importance of improving their digital infrastructure.
In a report, global consulting agency McKinsey said only 10 percent to 15 percent of financial transactions are made offline in Asia.
The report showed that half of Asia’s population are using banking services on their smartphones, ranging from 67 percent in China to 39 percent in India. “In emerging Asia these traditional channels, especially ATMs, still dominate, but customers are using Internet and smartphone banking almost five times more often than in 2011. Across Asia, consumers made fewer branch visits and calls in 2014 than in 2011,” McKinsey said.
For instance, Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) has enhanced its customer service infrastructure to further improve interaction between the bank and its clients. The move is also seen to boost customer service agent performance.
In partnership with Trends & Technologies, Inc. (Trends), UnionBank has deployed an Omni-channel Contact Center, Self Service and Workforce Management Solutions from Aspect Software, a global provider of fully integrated consumer engagement, workforce optimization and self-service solutions.
“Key to the bank’s digital transformation journey is building a digital mind-set of our employees, stakeholders and, of course, our customers. To achieve that, we need to create smarter customer experiences, enabling service channels that are accurate, real-time and always available. Acquiring Aspect’s contact center and work force optimization solution is the first of many steps in that omni-channel approach,” said Michael Magbanua, customer engagement group head and first vice president of UnionBank.
Aspect and Trends have implemented Aspect Unified IP 7.3 for inbound and outbound customer interaction services; Aspect CXP for UnionBank’s omni-channel self-service offerings; and Aspect Workforce Management for the bank’s customer service agents.
“We greatly admire and believe in the vision and strategies of UnionBank’s innovative leaders. We are very excited that UnionBank has chosen Trends as their partner to facilitate the enablement of their plan to reshape the bank into a technology company with banking utilities,” said Hasan Fard, chairman and CEO of Trends. “By utilizing Aspect’s solution and our technology expertise,
we were able to successfully service UnionBank and offer a solution to digitize their customer service infrastructure.” This will allow customers to seamlessly receive assistance when they move between live agent and self-service channels.
UnionBank earlier announced its three-year digital transformation journey aimed at digitizing its banking processes “to deliver a more reliable, seamless and personalized banking service.”
The current enhancement of its core customer service infrastructure to Aspect Unified IP 7.3, Aspect CXP and Aspect Workforce Management is in line with the bank’s digital plan to provide its 6 million clients quality customer service and personalized banking interaction across channels.
Aspect has a long history of expertise, starting from the first ACD in 1973. Today, Aspect solutions power 1.4 million agents worldwide and support over 100 million daily customer interactions. Contact Center Solution implementation is one of the core strengths of Trends in the Philippines.
“Trends has been a partner of UnionBank for more than 25 years. This implementation of Aspect’s Customer Engagement Solution is a strong demonstration of how that partnership is bolstering UnionBank’s Digital Transformation Journey,” said Dennis L. Matutina, executive vice president and head of channel management center of UnionBank.
“It’s a privilege to be a part of UnionBank’s digital transformation journey and equip the bank with a technology that can deliver quality customer engagement to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty and increase their value,” said Richard Loberas, regional vice president for Asean and Korea of Aspect Software (www.aspect.com).